prayer

There's a single tone that comes over the ship's intercom that marks the beginning of a ship-wide announcement. Usually you hear it when we're taking on fuel, or when the garbage container is full or things like that.

When it sounds at eleven on a Saturday night, you immediately assume the worst. Last night, that's exactly what it was. Emergency Medical Team to the ICU. Emergency Medical Team to the ICU.

We arrived quickly (not hard to do when you're living directly above the ICU itself) and everyone fell into place around the bed as we sought to save the life of the man lying there. I won't go into much detail, as I honestly don't know him, apart from everything that happened last night. Suffice it to say that he has an infection in his brain, and after a late-night trip to the OR, things don't look good.

He's being cared for now in the ICU, his family is on the way, and we're all praying for a miracle.

It's strange, this life. There's a critically ill man just below where I'm sitting, and I'm finding it hard to really care. I know that sounds awful, so please let me explain. For some reason this all feels so different from other times. Maybe because the first time I ever saw him he was unconscious and we were breathing for him, but I don't feel the same way I normally do when someone is so sick. There's no background, no common experience apart from that one, long, frantic hour before we turned him over to the OR staff. He's not a baby that I've held in my arms; I don't even know if he has family apart from the brother we were able to get in touch with this morning.

And despite all this, he is just as important as any of them. I am called to love this stranger in the same way I loved Baby Greg or O'Brien or Anicette, but I don't know how. I stood by his bed this morning, my hand on his arm, and I prayed for him. And I still don't feel anything.

Call it compassion fatigue, call it what you want, but you can't always care enough. Or at least you don't always, even if you should. It's one of the hardest things about this life, a life where you come face to face with pains and death on a consistent basis. Sometimes you just step back, throw up whatever shield you can and go on living despite the fact that there's a man fighting for his own life not fifty steps away. And you feel guilty for doing it, but there's no other way.

This is hard, not because I know him, but because I don't.


Please pray for James and his family. I'll update as I know anything more.